Soi Cowboy is arguably Bangkok's most popular expat Night Entertainment Area, but now, even more than before, what happens in Soi Cowboy had best stay in Soi Cowboy....

In the mid-1990's the Internet finally took full root and blossomed forth in 'viral' pandemonium. Everyone was discovering, and rushing to participate in the new technology - leaping headlong into the endless horizon. Virtually overnight we were able to communicate worldwide with as many people as we wanted - and to do it simultaneously, should we so desire. We were buying our first hand phones - again tearing down the fences - freeing us up to call from wherever we wanted, to whomever. And if we so desired, we could do either or both of these things entirely anonymously. We could even be someone else. We could effectively drop off the grid for longer or shorter periods - at our whim. This was one of the few times in history that there was a real, almost overnight technological 'game-changer' - and one which could be availed by anyone. We were in the new, electronic 'Wild West' - anything goes, or at least it did.

An artists conception of what the new $2 billion NSA intelligence gathering center in Utah will look like, once completed by the US Army Corps of Engineers next year. Here "Big Data" will have come of age - having already surpassed it's original goal of 20 terrabytes per minute, 24/7 - it will soon be handling data by the yottabytes (a 'yottabyte' is a quadrillion gigabytes).

However it wasn't long before 'the authorities', be they parents, or bosses, or government officials, realized that this was just too much of a good thing - there was a lot of talk, a lot of buzz, out there that tended to undermine their 'authority'. It couldn't be allowed to continue without 'proper oversight'. And thus, the spectre of censorship raised its ugly head yet again - the snake had, unsurprisingly, slithered into this new ethereal Eden as well. And to a certain extent, control of the Internet made sense - most sane minds agreed it should not be allowed to harbor and hide pedophiles or those undertaking anarchistic or terroristic pursuits. The Internet shouldn't be the new refuge of the criminal class - regulation and monitoring seemed like a good idea at the time.

Google's Data Park, or "data farm" during the construction phase in South Carolina. Google is planet earth's second largest 'data miner' after the NSA, and has a total of 9 plants such as the one above, each covering from four to six hectares. Three of these 'data farms' are outside of the USA. Based on Google's global power consumption, which is currently in excess of 220 megawatts world wide, Google currently has anywhere between 900,000 to 1,791,040 functioning servers (conservative estimates).

Of the two dystopian novels most popular in modern literature, 1984 (George Orwell), and Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), it would appear at first glance that we are now rushing ever closer to a 'Brave New World', rather than Orwell's fictional non-utopia of 'Oceania'. After all, we have found ourselves in a world where we are being buried in an Huxleyian avalanche of irrelevance and trivialities - more so than knowledge and truth being kept from us by Orwellian decrees and by Government censorship (if only marginally). Orwell feared we would be a controlled, managed culture, where Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture (and he predicted this without ever having seen daytime television and soapies). And the comparisons between the two continue.....

A peek at Facebook's server banks. Facebook is another major 'data miner', and growing rapidly. Their job however is made easier in that Facebook members willingly contribute reams of personal data about themselves. Nevertheless, even without the need to provide gigantic search engines, they still use a massive 28 megawatts of power to pump data into Phase 1 of their new $210 million Data Center. It currently covers 2.5 hectares - and growing. They are planning two more such facilities in the near future, the third being 300,000 square feet.

However.... we shouldn't ignore mankind's ability to seek out an even more hideous scenario - one where we have the worst of both of these once-fictional dystopias. Have a look around; are we not awash in trivia? What percent of the population now spends most, if not virtually all of it's waking hours watching Oprah, or CNN newstainment, or sports, or doing emails, or downloading TV shows and movies, or doing their "Social Media" thing with Twitter or Facebook, hitting the bars, or massage parlors, (you fill in the blanks). And to extend the Huxley analogy one step further, in this seemingly benign world, our augmentations, our "soma" can take either legal or illegal forms, but are nonetheless readily available - always there, always at hand, to keep us ever more so attached to our world of relative oblivion and our trivial day-wasting continuum. On the other hand, and not on the surface of things, do we not also have Orwell's "Big Brother" - who day-by-day intrudes ever more personally into our lives? Well, if you have any doubt, I'm here to tell you that we do, indeed.

A satellite photo of the NSA intelligence facilities, or the "Utah Data Center" for short, being constructed on, and next to the Camp Williams Military Reservation's now defunct airstrip outside of Bluffdale, Utah. The NSA's data mining fingers will be sifting retroactively as well - as exemplified by the recent AT&T turn-over of 320 million internal USA and international phone records.

When the electronic serpent of Internet censorship first appeared in the ethereal Wild West's tree (mixed metaphor?), we said nothing - it seemed proper to be denying perverts and other criminals a new and unlimited playground. But snakes can do only one of two things; grow or die. And you don't need me to tell you that the snake has continued to grow, worldwide. Internet censorship has been around since before 9-11, but after that unmitigated, unforgivable attack, censorship -especially electronic- has gone into hyperdrive. And again, for all honorable and much needed reasons. Money laundering by terrorists and other illegal activities needed to be pursued with vigor.

But the snake needs to grow. And two things (inevitable in hindsight) happened. First, Governments around the world began to realize that knowledgeable (regardless of the nature of that knowledge) is power. The more knowledge (read: 'data') they have about 'their sheep', the more powerful their position in dealing. The second thing that happened was the Internet went commercial - it became, on top of everything else, a marketplace. And what would a marketplace be without advertising? And how best to advertise than to know which individuals liked which 'stuff'? The answer to those questions is to 'mine' the information about the multitudes of electronic media users from their own emails and by tracking the websites they visit. Sound illegal? Well, if advertisers were opening your snail-mail to find out your various personal preferences, you could have them thrown in jail - in America it is a Federal offence to tamper with the US Mails. However on the Internet it is, for whatever unseemly, whatever irrational 'reason', entirely legal.

NSA's Utah Data Center - to be completed in 2013. No government since Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War twenty-six centuries ago, has been foolish enough to ignore the life-or-death necessity for "intelligence". However, when the NSA, after 9-11, implemented it's domestic surveillance program, Stellar Wind, there has been a not-so-quiet shit-storm of controversy over whether they have overstepped US Constitutional limitations. It is not our purpose to enter into this debate, only to report it's existence, and to remind all that Stellar Wind will affect you.

Both governmental and commercial electronic intruders, however ran into immediate problems. They had accumulated altogether too much data - by orders of magnitude. They would need help in order to wade through it all. But where there is a will, or perhaps where there is enough money, there is a way. And that 'way' is a brand new electronic way of walking: a new paradigm. The software had to be bigger, 'smarter', faster, and had to have instant access - the latter obtained by refined Deep Packet Inspection filters (DPI's). The process itself is called "Data Mining", and it is part of the newest field in computer sciences called "Big Data". If you doubt this, or if you just want to frighten yourself, go ahead and Google "Big Data" and "Data Mining". To date, the two biggest 'Data Miners' are the NSA and Google, with Russia and China a close 3rd and 4th.

But the Orwellian snake's appetite is not yet sated. Governments then realized they could use these new warehouses full of spinning memory disk servers to determine whether you are paying your taxes, whether or not you are lawfully collecting disability, and what you buy with your credit cards, and whether or not you associate with criminal types, or even whether or not you associate with other people who associate with criminal types. There is virtually no limit to the detail that they can obtain about an individual, should they think they have the need to do so - up to, and including "every whisper" (as suggested in Wired Magazine and others). This, my friends, is something far beyond, far more thorough, far more evil than that envisioned by Aldous Huxley or George Orwell.

And neither is the commercial snake's thirst slaked - the Googles of this world are equally thirsty for all your data. They claim that it is entirely for their directed advertisements, and all these personal details of yours are kept most secret, but that is patently untrue. Dare I call them liars? Not really, because if any one has ever read the fine print of what you agreed to when you chose to use Internet Explorer, or Google Chrome or various "cloud" email services, they tell you outright that your personal information is not really that private after all..... Worse than this, is that this supposedly secure personal data frequently ends up on the grey market for resale (think theft, think spam), or provided to governments in quiet, closed-door agreements.

It is hoped that none of us still believes in the unfettered Wild West of the Internet. It came and went in the '90's - and it won't be coming back. We have already seen the evil downside of this misused data, be it volunteered or stolen by spiders. We have seen numerous examples of web censorship, where websites, to include Night Entertainment websites, are here today, and gone tomorrow -all at the whim of some local karachakan in some ministry office. There is no warning, and there is no recourse - once you are on the blacklist, you have -electronically speaking- dropped your car keys in the lava. We have seen in the news recently where individuals have been sent to jail - and are doing real, hard time for items they provided on their websites from third parties. Again at the whim of 'the authorities'. We have also read the stories where employees have been fired, or prospective employees have been rejected because of a jest or a photo they have put on Facebook. The situation is, of course, not getting better - in a world where 'political correctness' (Cultural Fascism) is equated to 'illegal', you don't even need to break the law to suffer the hellfire of this new Universal censorship. And in case you hadn't noticed, we are on a one-way street.

So, going full circle, lets get back to our headline; 'The New Puritans'. -The New Puritans are those few out there that realize whatever they may say in email, or on the phone, or wherever they may go surfing in the Internet ether, any or all of it can, at least potentially, be used against them. They realize that as far as Big Brother can examine them, as far as Google can mine their personal correspondence, they must remain as pure as the driven snow. They must be able to show, by negative proof of indefinite duration, that they have been keeping their digital noses entirely clean in this ever-constricting dystopian digital age.

Specific to those Bangkok nightcrawlers, those who fancy themselves superstuds in a carefree sex-playland far from the prying eyes of 'home', you may want to watch what you blog, watch what you say on your muu tuu, watch what you email, watch what you post. After having worked for the largest telephone organization in the USA for several years, I can tell you from personal knowledge, 'everything is software', everything is potentially retrievable. And 'Part 2" of this is there is no "anonymous" - if they want to track it down (whatever "it" is), they can. The snake in the tree of knowledge now has way too much knowledge, and it can bide it's time before it decides to drop on the unsuspecting. Save the regaling of your barfine conquests and bedroom braggadocio for the barstool.

I am looking into the areas that provide gay nightlife in bkk for females

CG

Greetings, CG,

We assume your brief statement above is a question, and that it is specific to Bangkok and environs. As you know, our website is geared to the Expat community. As far as anyone here knows, there are no 'ladies with ladies' expat Night Entertainment Venues in Bangkok. We do know of one Night Entertainment Venue in Royal City Avenue (RCA) which is a 'ladies' lounge. It is called e-fun (Extreme Fun for Ladies). RCA is a predominantly Thai Nitespot area, however Expats are welcome.

The French Kiss has gone back to open bar beer format. No more indoor air-conditioning. Modus Operandi unchanged. May they continue to march.

PATPONG II

Clarity comes with time. Two months ago, after extensive renovations, they reopened as King's Garden (their old name). Last month, we saw a huge sign reading King's Corner - even though the old King's Corner was still rocking on Patpong 1. This month - yet another sign - this time : King's Corner 2. Looks like a mix of ladies and ladyboys on the floor. May they persevere.

PATPONG II

After more than 3 months' renovations, Pat Pong 24 has reopened with a flourish. They now have a comfortable, if small 'front verandah' if you feel like sitting outside to watch the passing zoo. Welcome them back to the night circus.

Long overdue recognition is extended to the The Dollhouse, The Dollhouse has arguably the most recognizable neon in all of Soi Cowboy; appearing in more photographs, more paintings than any other - by a country mile. A Bangkok icon.

The Strikers Sports Pub just finished expanding from one shophouse to three - it looked like they were in it for the long haul. But no, the Hillary Group (can we call them a 'group'?) have just taken over the reins, and appear to be doing a roaring business. Check out Hillary 4. Welcome them as they give yet another roll to the dice.

NANA PLAZA

It looks like Stumble Inn (small white sign in Thai language in the photo), and all it's neighbors, are getting the full-renovation treatment. We understand they will be reopening within the month, and will keep the same name. If not, we will so advise next issue.

NANA PLAZA

Red Lips will not be stuffing any more chits into any more cups - their darkened entranceway blocked with large items of furniture. However their sister next door, the Pretty Lady, is now advertising for several new employees of every description - giving credence, however indirect, to the rumor that the two bars will be combined into a larger one. This, however is unconfirmed, so we will keep an ear to the ground and get back atcha.

NANA PLAZA

Although they have closed temporarily several times before, the @ Lift looks like it has finally 'gone down for the third time'. Junk and boxes piled high within the bar area. Ashes to ashes, so be it, then....

The Degas, consigned to the annals of Night Entertainment history, has given over it's digs to the brand-new i Bar. The new management, however, was unable to explain the meaning of the Thai language "Bar Kru" on the sign, however. Welcome them to the machine.

SOI DEAD ARTISTS - SOI 33

What once was Papa will soon be Harper. And to be honest, we don't know 100% for sure it will even be a Night Entertainment Venue when they pull the construction fencing down. We'll keep an eyeball peeled, and when we know, you'll know.

SOI DEAD ARTISTS - SOI 33

Opening right about....... NOW is the 33 Thai Sabai Massage - located above the Dali (in the old Dali Coyote digs). Once it gets under steam, we will provide some additional photos....

SOI DEAD ARTISTS - SOI 33

The Tuk Tuk Music Pub & Restaurant on Soi Dead Artists closed (RIP) about the same time the Tuk Tuk Bar bar beer opened in Queen's Park Plaza, however the lovely manageress of the new Tuk Tuk says that was just a coincidence - they are not related.

- File photos

SOI DEAD ARTISTS - SOI 33

The upstairs Joy (a Nippon venue) located in the S33 Compact Hotel grounds has reopened after being down and out for a couple of months. Welcome back to the fray.

Washington Square has been slowly closing down as a Night Entertainment Area for the last several months due to a major land redevelopment by the owners. Most of the Nitespots have already either closed or relocated; the Area has dropped below the "critical mass" required to sustain customer interest. Midnight Hour will no longer report on this Night Entertainment Area on a monthly basis. However we will continue to track that area and report any additional closures of existing bars as they occur.

The long-standing and ever popular Popeye 2bar beer is "shutters-down", and as Bernard Trink would surely say, 'What's that all about, I wonder?" The 'Popeye' saga started some years ago with a small bar beer bar at the back of Clinton Plaza, and then, before the final collapse of Clinton, it moved to Asoke Corner. Then the new branch, Popeye 2 opened in Queen's Park Plaza. Popeye-wise, the Popeye 2 is, or was, the last man standing. We will reconfirm it's fate on our next round and give all a come-back.

QUEEN'S PARK PLAZA

The Queen's Park Plaza, long home to feral cats, is now home to several additional litters of new kittens. All of them cute as hell, but many are diseased with conjunctivitis - and whatever. Someone in charge over there needs to do the right, the safe, thing and address this problem.

Bangkok Eyes jumps back in time to have a look at who was new - and who was through. We'll be willing to bet that many of you "Old Bangkok Hands" will be reminded of some bars you'd almost forgotten. (We also will be willing to bet you WON'T EVEN REMEMBER an even greater number....)

10 YEARS AGO :

August

The
Pussy Galore closed, adding their heft to sister-bar Pussy Collection (which is still there today).

PATPONG 1 - August 2002

The
Bua Luang Karaoke located in the Cosmos stairwell added floor four to the 2 floors they already occupied.

PATPONG 2 - August 2002

The other
Bua Luang Karaoke located on the second floor above today's Strip also closed down.

PATPONG 2 - August 2002

The Dollhouse closed down temporarily.

SOI COWBOY - August 2002

Suzie Wong reopened after a temporary closure.

SOI COWBOY - August 2002

The Pui Massage opened next to today's Po Massage. No venue exists at that location today.

SOI DEAD ARTISTS (Soi 33)- August 2002

The Ngan Hang closed for renovations. It was located at today's Lek Massage.

GRAFFITI - ME ?(An "Introduction" to Graffiti for those interested in
the "Art" and the "Controversy".)

Perhaps one of the most extraneous and arcane forms of Night Entertainment is that of graffiti. Often illegal, frequently artistic, occasionally humorous, and most of the time controversial. Graffiti is not a form of 'entertainment' that all will enjoy. Many see it as vandalism - plain and simple, while others see it as an art form, or 'art brut' - a street sub-set of Modern Art. (....Continued....)

One of the few remaining color photographs of Lynne Seemayer's'Pink Lady'. Late October / early November, 1966.

In January, 1966, Lynne Seemayer, an unassuming 31-year old paralegal living in Northridge, California, became an anti-graffiti army of one - single-handedly and systematically removing "eyesore" graffiti from above the Malibu Canyon road tunnel entrance. One of the more offensive graffitis was the ubiquitous "Valley Go Home" that we San Fernando Valley kids had seen virtually everywhere and had wondered about for years. She worked diligently, suspended from ropes from the cliff-top above, meticulously removing graffito after graffito.

One night, while suspended by ropes high above the tunnel's entrance, she came to the realization that the huge flat cliff face she was scraping her knees on was indeed an ideal location for a piece of art - real art. No one knows when the epiphany seized her - the one that told her she was the person to create that work - but from that point on, her midnight sorties, her 'mission', had morphed into something quite different.

But being a 'spare time only' undertaking, it wasn't until August of '66 that the cliff face above the tunnel was finally rid of most of the unsightly graffiti. In her future midnite visits, she commenced outlining in chalk a huge nude figure on that selfsame surface. Doing a little each spare night, and checking and making mental adjustments by day, she finally completed her sketching in October of that year (.....after rejecting her earlier vision of a bird, as the wingspan precluded a good fit on the more vertical surface).

By 28 October 1966, her chalk outlining and sketching had been completed, and the cliff face was finally prepped, and all the materials were at the ready. And in a marathon all-night assault on the cliff face, she took brilliant pink exterior house paint by the bucketsful down the face of the cliff to fill in her gigantic chalk outlines. She then returned home to prepare breakfast for her family. The result of the all-night assault on the Malibu cliff-side, visible for the first time only on the morning of 29 October, was the 60 foot high Pink Lady Of Malibu Canyon, or more generally known as "the Pink Lady".

But this is not the end of the Pink Lady story. Rather, it is the beginning. Morning traffic couldn't help but notice the gigantic nude running across the mountain face with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. They would stop to gawk and gander. Word spread quickly, and before long, the Malibu Canyon tunnel had become a perpetual traffic jam. The news services got word of it, and news of the Pink Lady's miraculous overnight appearance quickly spread across the US. Rumors coursed back and forth about her appearance, her significance and about whom the artist might be. The consensus, of course, was that the artist must be a male.

This apparition of a Pink Lady, of course, was not acceptable to the straight-laced members of society, to include the local Sheriff's Department, who had to do something about the unending traffic jam. They called in the fire department to hose off the cliff face with high pressure fire fighting equipment. They succeeded in washing her down good, ridding her of any dust and dirt, and after her shower she shone more resplendently than ever. They then tried a paint-removing solvent - also to no avail. The gathered crowds were not amused - they began harassing and heckling County officials and firefighters at the scene, and passed around a petition to protect the Pink Lady from what they felt was "prudish, inartistic, inhuman and apathetic" attitudes and efforts.

Up to this time, Lynn Seemayer had kept quiet, but then she made a pivotal decision - she would prevent the officials from removing her Pink Lady. She stepped forward, announcing that she was indeed the artist, and that the work should not be removed - and followed up by filing for a court injunction to that effect. Of course, the newspapers had a field day - the mystery artist had at last been revealed - a woman (!) Meanwhile, County officials refused her applications for a court injunction.

But Seemayer's life was just about to get interesting..... Artistic acclaim and proposals of marriage poured in. She also got invitations to join a nudist colony. She also got a bill from the County for costs relating to the removal. She was the recipient of hate and kook mail, and threatening telephone calls. One pathetic woman persisted in calling Seemayer multiple times, claiming that her daughter had run away from home some time back, and that Seemayer had obviously used her as the model for the Pink Lady - as evidenced by the fact that the Pink Lady was an exact likeness of her missing daughter. Another disgruntled kook sent her a letter threatening to tar and feather her and her children and dump them off on Sunset Boulevard - a letter that she turned over to the FBI.

To the din of a booing crowd, County officials finally succeeded in getting rid of the Pink Lady, painting over the entire work with 14 gallons of grey-tan paint (the rumors that followed claimed, without merit, that the Pink Lady finally had to be sand-blasted off). The Pink Lady lasted exactly one week. Seemayer's injunctions were never issued, so she sued the County for $1 million for destruction of her work and invasion of privacy. They counter-sued for $26 thousand to recoup their obliteration efforts. The Court threw both cases out - come to find out the Pink Lady was painted on private property; in the eyes of the Court, neither suit had legs.

She continued to receive offers of all kinds, even though she changed her telephone number. One of these offers was to show her works at an art gallery. Men sent her pictures of themselves masturbating. Another woman accused her of all the rapes that had been committed in the LA-Orange County area, and advised Seemayer that the Pink Lady brought out the lust in men. An arts group invited her to judge oil canvasses painted by gorillas.

Finally the strain became too much for Seemayer; she fell sick and was hospitalized with pneumonia. On top of that, she lost her job as paralegal in Northridge. But she wasn't safe from bother in the hospital, either. While under treatment at the hospital, a staff member approached her with a handful of papers. Seemayer thought the documents were for a medical procedure. They were not, the lady staff member wanted her autograph.

Despite all the speculation, artistic and otherwise, on the significance of the Pink Lady painting, artist Seemayer, in her own words, said simply, "I felt the urge to create a piece of art, to do something that was my own."

- And now to Midnight Hour's own brand of BangkokGraffiti ....

Graffiti #568
Nose Best
8 ft. high x 9 ft.

Graffiti #569
Hindy
8 ft. high x 16 ft.

Graffiti #570
Hits Your Eye
8 ft. high x 16 ft.

Graffiti #571
Silver Eel
8 ft. high x 9 ft.

Graffiti #572
Shop Heads
8 ft. high x 18 ft.

Graffiti #573
Rastous
8 ft. high x 16 ft.

Graffiti #574
Rabidity
8 ft. high x 22 ft.

Graffiti,Graffiti , and more Graffiti - Bangkok's original graffiti Site !

The
MIDNITE HOURGraffiti Page is prepared by
Staff Contributor"Boge" Hartman.

(Boge's photo, above, is not a graffitiper-se, although there are those who have insinuated.... -
Ed)